Y insists that I abjure my nascent literary pretensions and become a counter-tenor. A natural flutter, he says.

I have outgrown the airy, effete Les oiseaux phase, the gooseheaded French waltzes, and perhaps momentarily disengaged myself from the sprawling and soaring, the whooping and looping of Martern, Periglio and Sembiante. And now I'm trying to get a grip on Handel. His music is floreated but not flagrant, buoyed by (and yet at the same time, serenely afloat on) a ceaseless current. The tender, nubile capering of Volate, amori and Con l'ali di costanza, the stately sorrow of Scherza infida, the softly radiant ebb and flow and sotto voce grandeur of Dopo notte. Refrains of lambent beauty, making their reflux with a blushing da capo flourish and variation. Then of course there are the wings and flying, the gaudy gambol of Preparati and Dover.

Nadaman has the most wondrously tremulous chawanmushi.